


Here Andromeda Lies...

by The Poet of Deimos (Kkharrin)



Category: Red Rising Trilogy - Pierce Brown
Genre: Animal Attack, Anxiety Attacks, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drug Use, Flashbacks, Gen, Illnesses, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Medical Procedures, Medicinal Drug Use, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Needles, Nightmares, Painkillers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Violence, opiate use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:24:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6231361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kkharrin/pseuds/The%20Poet%20of%20Deimos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An tale of Roque's four days alone in the Wilderness...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Andromeda Lies...

The water laps at his neck.  


It is the first thing he is aware of. Before the feeling of the wet sand under his body, the sound of the river rippling past, before even the pain, he feels the touch of the water, like a kiss.  
It takes a few minutes beyond this first awareness for his eyes to open. His eyelids covered in grit, blinking furiously at the irritation. He is too weak to even try to raise a hand.  
He’s not entirely sure how long he lies there but he feels more than sees the light dim, senses a change in the flow of the river, tidal variation…  
He knows he is a long way from home.  
This awareness, along with the loss of the daylight forces him to move. First a finger of his left hand, thrown haphazardly across the sand of the riverbank, the muscles of his neck and back craning for a view, finding only unfamiliar trees budded with white blossom and the bloody scar of a sunset.  
He tries to shift, to push himself up onto his right hand and finds himself rictused with pain, the bones of his arm sliding beneath him. He cries out before he can stop himself, biting down on his lip, faced with the very real prospect that he doesn’t know whether he can even stand.  
Some part of him knows that he shouldn’t be this calm, but there’s disconnect between the reality of lying on the sandbank and any conscious knowledge of…who he is.  
His head slumps against the sand with the realization. Behind his eyes is white noise and static. There are focused points of pain: his arm, his head, his ribs and chest but that seems the only thing he can focus upon at all. He can’t remember why he was in the river. He can’t remember how he came to be here.  
He takes a breath and rolls onto his left side with a sharp exhalation, gasping up at the sky, now dark enough to show the pinprick points of stars. Trying to settle his breath he looks down at his arm, startling as he sees the fingers swollen and purple, the wrist band of his skinSuit digging so tight that it seems it might cut off the circulation.  
He feels his breath tighten again, clenching his eyes shut to desperately bring himself to his centre. It is a pained effort to force himself up into a seated position, closing his eyes as he sways, fingers fumbling with the knife he knows he would find against his thigh.  
Not a razor, not even a close second, but it would do the job.  
He digs the knife into the shoulder seam of his right arm, taking a nervous breath as he drags the blade along it’s length, feeling the edge knick at his skin. It is awkward and painful, leaving him gasping as he rolls the top of his sleeve away from the main body of his suit.  
He, perhaps ill-advisedly, tries to pull the sleeve from his arm but the motion leaves him retching, pain spasming through his injured ribs. All he manages to vomit up is river water.  


River water and a thin trail of blood.  


The pain is not contained to his forearm, it snaps in waves through his humerus and he finds himself clenching the knife so hard that it almost slips from his grip. Just the seam, he tells himself, just cut the seam and some of the pain will subside.  
He takes a sharp breath and digs in, a stab of pain showing that he cut too deep, but he draws down, feeling the fabric slice under the pressure, feeling a surge of pain as the blood rushes back into his arm. He whimpers as the knife snags by his elbow, impatience making him want to just rip the fabric from his arm. He slashes at the seam but it holds and instead he must hook his knife under the edge of the fabric, feeling a sharp burn as the blade slides down the skin.  
He very nearly cries when the skinSuit falls from his arm. Bruises cover its entire length.  
Part of him remembers begging, offering himself for the pain, the crunch of a booted foot on his wrist over and over…  
Now he cries.  


‘Lea?’  


_Is that his voice?_ It sounds so feeble, so weak.  


Her name is followed by the scent of violets, the memory of rich mahogany hair run through with golden threads.  


Spasmodically, his left hand clutches to his chest…as if holding her. 

\--

It is the sounds of the night that force him to move. He feels rather than hears every rustle, turning his head fitfully when he hears what sounds like a howl in the distance. His right arm hangs at his side, heavy with the leaden weight of pain. He has no fabric to use as a sling, no second hand to help him splint the fractured bones. Even the slightest movement threatens to rictus him.  
He stares down at his skinSuit, drawn tight across his chest and takes a breath, feeling the warm calm of a solution. He hooks the knife under the shoulder of the skinSuit, slitting the fabric up to the neck so the chest falls forward, revealing his skin to the cold night air.  
It takes him three minutes of pain so intense he nearly collapses to bind his broken arm to his chest, forcing the bruised limb into the tight space between fabric and skin. He can feel the bones moving under his touch and vomits again, drawing the skinSuit back up to his neck, tucking one edge of the fabric under the other.  
He already feels off balance.  
He manages to lift himself up onto one knee, then the other. One foot and then the other. The view from his left eye is slightly obscured and a tentative hand to his face reveals a knot of swelling over his cheekbone all the way across to his nose.  
He immediately regrets laying a finger on his nose…  
He purses his lips as he presses his fingers on either side of the bridge, clenching his eyes shut and twisting with a resounding crunch. The pain is like a fire in a torchShip, spreading in waves through his head and face, but he can breath again, no longer feels the strange pressure in the left side of his nose.  
He decides the pain might be worth it….maybe.  
It is suicide to consider staying here on the riverside. As he tilts his head back, the stars swirl around him, a vortex with him at the centre. It was foolish to wait until night had fallen but he takes a staggering step towards the bank, his legs wobbling like those of a newborn foal.  
He wonders whether anyone is watching him stumble on the bank. Do they know what has happened? Do they know the carnage that was left in the glade as he was dragged inexorably away by the current?  
The bank is slick and it is an exercise in endurance to reach the top, grabbing at tufts of grass with his one good hand as his feet slide underneath him. Following the river upstream seems the most logical way of returning home, ducking into the cover of the tree line, keeping the light of the moon at his shoulder.  


He begins to walk.  


Time passes torturously slowly. His joints ache; the pain in face sporadically flares and settles, he’d potentially do anything for an ampoule of morphine. It becomes a heavy rhythm of one foot in front of the other, half tripping over branches in the darkness, craning for the sound of distant movement or voices. He keeps the knife in his hand.  
It is during this walking that he begins to remember.

\--

The initial symptom is shaking.  
Followed by a tightness in his chest that he can’t attribute to anything physiological. His thoughts are darting like minnows in the shadow of a stream. He sees fractured images of things he never wanted to see again…tries to tell himself they never happened. That he was always this alone…  
The light of the moon casts such strange shadows. More than once he finds himself running, hurtling through the woods in a frenzy; feeling eyes upon him that he, rationally, knows were not there. He is not used to weakness, not used to the tiredness that pours through his limbs, making it seem with every step that he is more and more part of the earth.  


It is when he sees her that he stops.  


She stands cradled in the moonlight. He thinks she might be smiling but he cannot be sure, her edges blur and fade away into the night.  


His chest tightens and he grasps at the closest tree, ducking under its shelter, breathing and watching the light dance across the surface of the river. He knows he should sleep but over and over he remembers what happens when you let your guard down for even a second.  
His eyes are almost painfully heavy; his clothing is still wet from the river, chilling him in the night air. He slips behind the tree, into the underbrush, crawling under an arch of thorns into a cavity in the nettles. The wind whistles even here but he feels that maybe the eyes have moved from him, that maybe they will not find him here.  
He curls up on his side, cradling his head against his one good arm, his knees drawing up close to his chest. It is pitilessly dark but a little of his panic recedes. 

\--

 

Black eyes, like pitch, set far too many in a face, stare down at him. They are like gravity wells, deep black holes that threaten to suck him in. Fire leaps around him.  


Perversely, everything smells of violets.  


The creature seems to move with too many limbs, segmented, crossing the glade in a scuttle towards him. He is powerless to run, powerless to even scream as the creature bears down upon him.  
He closes his eyes, curls up and wakes in a pool of his own sweat.  


The sky is still dark; it is maybe an hour before dawn if that is the softest of glows upon the water. His throat is dry and sore, as if he had been screaming.  
Immediately he sets to work, building his barricade, nailing shut everything he could connect even vaguely to what had occurred. Behind the wall goes the gleaming eyes, the flames…the scent of violets.  
He still feels week. It is as if the few hours he’s stolen have disappeared into some unknown ether, as if time slipped past without touching him. If anything, he feels sicker. His forehead is feverish to the touch, his lungs heavy, as if beginning to fill with fluid, the sinuses behind his face hot and inflamed.  
Dragging himself from the burrow, he gathers blackberries from the thorns, eating them in such a rush he feels the juice bleed down his chin. His face smarts as he chews, the side of his jaw, where a knot of bruising is rising, clunking with each movement. It’s not enough to sustain him but maybe it will help with the lightheadedness until he can find something more substantial.  


Taking a breath, trying to ignore the ragged pain that runs through his arm and ribs, he begins to walk. 

\--

As the sun rises he is still walking, watching the trees thin along the river bank, feeling a dry sick sensation in his stomach as he realizes how open and wide the river becomes. There is mist over the water but he knows that there are other Houses along the river, that there may be other Golds fishing at the waters edge.  
He turns, marking the position of the sun, knowing that Fort Mars is north east, around a long bend in the river.  
He also realizes that he is on the wrong river bank.  


Above him is the screech of a hawk. It startles him, forcing him back into the cover of the tree line. For a second, just a brief second it’s cry had run through him right from one end of his vertebral column to the other.  
As he crouches beneath the undergrowth he is glad of it’s warning. From the west is the sound of hooves. He lies beneath the nettles until he sees a troupe of lancers thunder down to the water’s edge, dismounting, letting their horses drink, laughing in loud bawdy voices.  
He holds his breath, terrified of letting even the leaves rustle, watching as they strip and leap into to the river. He scans for familiar faces but sees none, no one from his life before the Institute. Not for the first time he wonders whether any of them will still live by the time this is over.  
The Golds by the river are laughing, joking, splashing one another with water. He remembers slipping down to the riverside, sliding into the water, pressing his lips to every part of her.  
He shakes his head, clenching his eyes shut to force the image from his mind. He cannot be distracted. He cannot let himself think of that…of her.  
Distractedly, he wonders how long he can keep this up. How long he can simply wall off everything that hurts? Will he wake one day paralyzed by the remembering? Lie aching on the ground, catatonic, until someone places a razor blade between his eyes?  
Eventually, they dress, still laughing and smiling and mount their horses. He can feel the rumble of the hooves in the ground as they gallop past, whooping and cheering. He had not been able to see house insignia on their clothes. It perturbs him to know so little, to have no idea how the politics of the Institute has changed…or even how long it has been since he lay in that glade.  
He waits until they are far from him before scrambling to his feet, staring across the wide openness of the plain to the tree line in the far distance. He wonders whether he could settle his breathing and run. It is maybe two miles, a morning stroll any other day, but now he feels the beginnings of sickness like a heavy weight in his lungs.  
It is not clever. It is so very far from it. But he surveys the tree line and the wide expanse of grass, then he begins to run.  


It may not be clever he thinks, but it is brave, and he is nothing if not a true man of Mars.  


He imagines the drones and the med bots whirring ahead as he sets his pace, trying with difficulty to open his chest and lungs. His balance is off with his broken arm bound to his chest. His eyes dart this way and that and he stumbles once, twice, before he realizes he needs to concentrate solely on putting one foot in front of the other.  


He always hated running.  


The ground is damp this close to the river, covered in a film of dew, it slides underfoot. Roque swallows the bile rising in his throat and lengthens his stride, letting the grass thrum past on either side of his vision.  
His legs are burning, the wet skinSuit leaving raw marks across the backs of his knees, but he runs with the promise of freedom, the promise of returning to a place where he doesn’t have to huddle under the wet leaves and pretend that everything is alright.  
He stumbles into the tree line, chest heaving. It shouldn’t have been that painful. Pressing a hand against his forehead he’s met by a furnace of heat. He risks staggering to the waterside, splashing it over his face, taking a long drink.  


It tastes like waking up on a bank with no idea where you are.

\--

From there he disappears into the woods, bemused and mildly terrified by the fact that it seems to have been that simple. He finds more berries on the brambles, sucking the juice from them as he walks, ever mindful of the motion of the forest around him.  
It is a lackadaisical day, grey through and through and not a sparkle of sunshine breaks the canopy. There is a high level breeze that whips the tops of the trees and sends leaves spinning down to crunch beneath his feet.  
He’s not sure what day it is or whether it even matters. He keeps the river to his right and continues to breathe. 

\--

The day passes slowly, wearily.  
Roque is increasingly short of breath, coughing fitfully as the sky darkens. He knows he must keep moving, but it is _hard_. He let’s his mind play over the safe memories, memories of childhood and the time before the institute.  
Near his home there is a forest of towering conifers. In winter, snow caps every needle in heavy sheets and the lakes are covered in ice so thick you can skate upon the surface.  
He allows himself to dream that he is in these woods, amongst the bright white shadows of the snow. That the numbing cold is simply that of winter, that soon he will be in the warmth, will press his fingers close to the open fire, and feel sensation sing back into his skin.  
It is in this mindset that he finds his second hollow. He curls up into a ball and lets the darkness take him. 

\--

The hiss of machinery wakes him with a start.  


He feels his heart race. Have they sent the medBots for him? He’s not ready to be shamed. He can fight.  


‘Fabii, I know you’re in there.’ He recognizes that gruff voice; he just wasn’t expecting to hear it out here.  
He dips his head out from under the safety of the brambles, looking up into the perpetually perturbed face of Proctor Fitchner.  
‘Sir?” His voice comes out surprisingly hoarse as he slips from his den. He draws himself up to his full height, surprised to find himself looking down upon the man.  
‘How are you feeling Fabii?’ There is a sadness in the man’s eyes that Roque doesn’t have an answer for.  
‘This…this isn’t standard procedure is it?’ Roque asks warily.  
‘No one can see, I’m blocking the signal.’ Fitchner replies and he is so open and honest that Roque almost lets all emotions past his sea wall.  
‘Why are you here?’ Roque whispers.  
Fitchner pauses, staring past Roque, considering his answer.  
‘Because I want you to get home.’  
Roque opens his mouth to speak.  
‘No, you listen.’ Fitchner’s expression sharpens. ‘You made a stupid error, an error you cannot ever make again.’ _An error that cost someone their life_.  
He doesn’t say it but Roque feels it as a whip crack across his emotions nevertheless.  
‘You need to learn and I think you’re doing a damn good job of doing it.’ Fitchner looks over his shoulder, his rugged face strangely soft.  
Again Fitchner silences him when he opens his mouth.  
‘No talking, sleep, save your strength.’ Fitchner’s hand rises to worry the side of his temple. ‘If you manage this, to get back to the Fort, you won’t be able to move for patrons.’  
‘I let someone…’ He can’t finish the sentence. He can’t do it.  
‘But what you’re doing now, shutting it up, not stopping it from getting in the way of what you’re doing?’ Fitchner pauses, as if making sure the point sinks in. ‘That’s the mark of a true Iron Gold.’  
‘That doesn’t sound very healthy.’ He replies, his voice small.  
‘Come now, what about anything we’re doing is healthy, boyo?’ His mouth twists when he says the last word, almost as if he hadn’t intended to speak it.  
‘Now, get some sleep, and if all goes well you won’t see me again.’ Fitchner nods gravely.  
He stares at Roque somewhat confusedly.  
‘Go to sleep.’ He points at burrow. ‘What are you gonna do? Wave goodbye?”  
_Well, yes_ . He had been about to.  


Under the weight of Fitchner’s eyes he crawls back into his burrow and hears the gravBoots engage.  
He settles down to sleep, closing his eyes.  


He wasn’t ready for the bread roll that drops from the sky, landing squarely on his head.

\--

The next day breaks much as the day before. Grey. Hazy. Cold mist swirling in off the river. But this time he stays curled on his side. He begins to cough and finds himself struggling to stop. It is a horrible gurgling sound, hacking, hacking, bringing up lumps of phlegm that he has to spit onto the ground at his side.  


His broken ribs sing with every cough.  


He has saved half of Fitchner’s bread roll for breakfast and he eats it slowly, painfully, his throat sore and irritated. Everything in his head hurts and once again he is sodden through and shivering.  


Usually a creature of the night, the Poet can’t wait for the sun to rise…  


River water follows the bread. He knows it’s a bad plan, drinking water from a source potentially filled with dead bodies and excrement, but he can barely swallow and his mouth feels drier than the deserts of Mars. He tries not to think of such things and staggers to his feet, beginning once more his lonely trek.  
He has been conscious for nearly two days, though he doesn’t know how long he has been away from House Mars, how long since…  
He shakes his head, focusing instead on his plan.  
He knows from his time on the maps that the river has a ford, due north of his position. It lies worryingly close to the Fort of House Juno and beyond that is House Ceres. The forest thins the farther north he walks. He knows it is only too long before he is at risk of being captured on the open plain. Yet even if he were to cross the river there is more open plain and the mountain foothills of the Highlands. The further he reaches into the Highlands the greater the likelihood that someone of House Mars will find him…if House Mars even exists.  


He pauses, closing his eyes and fixing the view of the map in his mind, remembering the approximate locations of the Highlands, the Greatwoods, and the Houses spread in between. House Diana had sworn allegiance to House Mars making the Greatwoods potentially the safest option. Due North lay only enemy houses and the dangerous pass of the Argos River through the foothills of the Highlands. Journeying the Greatwoods came with it the risk of capture by House Minerva but also the potential to find scouts of his own House.  


The final thought brings him pause. Does his House even stand?  


It is followed by a crack in his sea wall. A crack that makes it even more difficult to breathe. He sees Antonia’s face, gleeful, a face of his own House drawing that knife, making those cuts. A face of his own house bringing their booted heel down hard on rib and wrist until he was roaring with pain. A face of his own house…  


He feels his knees give way and kneels, chest heaving, on the moss.  


His hand clenches tight on the grass, his chest rattling as he attempts to suppress a sob. He tries so hard. He tries so hard to not remember and yet it comes, the memories come and overwhelm him.  


To have someone there, the feeling of a hand in your own…that feeling, to have it gone, for no reason, no explanation, it leaves a hollow. A hollow he hasn’t time to fill. He feels the edges of his lips curl, tighten into a sob that he manages to bite down.  


He hasn’t time for this pain.  


She would not want him to suffer.  


She would not want him to die. 

He still doesn’t know for certain she is dead.  
He thinks it is that which hurts him the most. Torments him with imaginings of her strung between trees, subjected to never ending torture at Antonia’s hand.  


Prometheus…  


But she was good and kind, filled with love and laughter. The Passage had haunted her, left her shaking whilst they slept in each other’s grasps.  


She hadn’t an ounce of cruelty.  


She didn’t deserve pain.  


He feels the grass under his hand tear from the earth.  


His spine is rigid with rage, his face rictused into a snarl.  


_The Poet_. They spat that name at him as if it made him weak. But they do not realize that gentle words do not a gentle heart make. He would not die in this glorified gladiatorial ring. He would not let Lea’s sacrifice be in vain.  
He would survive.  


And in his patient, terrible way he would come for them. 

\--

He makes the river crossing that evening, waiting for night to fall before slipping across the Argos Ford east of House Juno. His chest hurts with a burning fury, his limbs are heavier than any of the weights his mother had made him strap to his wrists and ankles from before he could walk. To temper him to Iron she had said. He was perversely grateful for a life’s worth of small sufferings now he was stranded on enemy ground. Though he knew he would never tell her that.  
From there he tries to run, tries to leave the open ground for the covered border of the Greatwoods. But his chest will not allow him to run, he makes barely fifty metres before he is on his knees, choking on great hacking coughs, spitting up what feels like the entire contents of his chest cavity. He has a stabbing pain in his side. Pressing his hand to his forehead he finds it blindingly hot.  
It takes the wind from him. He staggers to his feet but he feels the weight on his chest like an anvil. He imagines the bacteria flooding through his blood, imagines a scenario where he collapses or goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up.  
The answer does not come to him in seconds, or even minutes. It comes to him over maybe an hour of torturous walking.  
He looks around him at the waterlogged ground of the meadow. He staggers a few steps, stumbles and falls, near face first in the mud. He fights to his feet, staggering another few meters and takes a second tumble.  


This time he lies still. 

\--

It takes maybe twenty minutes for him to hear the soft buzz of the medBot.  


It flies in from the west, circling him a few times in high lazy rotations. He imagines the cameras of the drones fixed on him, patrons…his own parents sighing disgustedly.  


His one good hand rests on the hilt of his knife.  


The medBot begins to descend; he can hear the hissing as its gravThrusters engage. Lowering it slowly, slowly, to the ground in front of him. He marks it from the corner of his eye, pristine white plastic, multiple arms to make basic aid and repatriation quicker and easier. It is dark in the meadow, but the lights across the chest of the medBot are like a beacon in the night.  
It burbles and beeps to itself as it rolls across the waterlogged grass, reaching out with a small sensor to check his pulse.  
He allows it to touch him, allows it to move closer still, taking readings to send to Olympus. Let them have them, let them see he was ill enough to fail and yet…  


He lashes out with the knife, forcing himself up onto his knees, slashing the medBot’s arm clean off at the joint. A small light begins to flash in the main body and Roque knows it is only too long before a siren sings. As the arms flail, he grabs the head of the main console, where he assumes the cameras and tech lie. He slides his whole arm around it, hacking at the seam between the body and head with his knife, the arms skittering around him, punching him once or twice in his injured arm, making him gasp.  
The medBot is not programmed to defend itself. But maybe after this little trick they will be.  
The knife sinks in deep, cutting into the core circuitry with an electrical jerk that makes him wince. The lights gutter out, the limbs falling heavily against the floor. It is the android equivalent of a severed brainstem.  


Roque unhooks his arm, letting it sink to the floor. His breathing is tighter even than before but he sinks to his knees, using his knife to prise open the chest cavity of the machine. The door used to restock the Bot opens with a dull click. The battery supply is still running even though the main circuitry to the head has been cut. Light floods out across the grass revealing small packets of gauze, splinting, small ampoules of liquids with brand names embossed on the side. He knows it is one of these that he is looking for.  
He grabs handfuls of little bottles, shoving them down the front of his skinSuit, followed by the gauze, handfuls of syringes and needles in sterile packaging. He knows he has little time to tarry, that the sudden abrupt ending of the feed would warrant further investigation.  
Keeping an eye on the sky he leaves the medBot in the mud, walking as fast as his aching chest will allow. He sees the tree line ahead, finds himself counting down the steps until he’s in its embrace. Maybe then he can sleep.  
He will need the daylight to figure out which one of these bottles is the antibiotic he was looking for.  


He continues his limping progress towards the woods, cursing as he hears the hum of gravBoots in the distance.  


He turns once and sees armoured figures landing at the medBot’s side.  


If they see him, they decide to let him pass. 

\--

The Rigors find him that night.  


He lays in the deep grass under the low lying boughs of a tree and shakes, teeth chattering, his forehead the same burning heat he’d felt before.  
He falls into a fitful sleep, waking with his teeth gritted from dreams of spiders crawling over his flesh, the never ending image of Antonia’s face distorted by whatever drug she’d ground into his tongue.  


Once he wakes screaming from a dream where it is him wielding the knife…  


It takes far too long for morning to come.  
As the light creeps over the horizon he tips the vials into his mud soaked lap, poking through them, reading the sides of the bottles with a frown. He sorts them into two rows, one is the antibiotic he was searching for, Ceftaloximine, the other a long line of morphine.  
Using his teeth and his one hand he begins the near impossible task of drawing up the antibiotic. His hand shakes on the plunger, two fingers barely enough for the job but eventually he manages. He unzips his skinSuit, gritting his teeth as he must rearrange his broken arm in his lap so the veins are visible in the antecubital fossa. Taking a deep breath he inserts the needle into the vein, drawing back on the plunger to satisfy himself that the placement is correct. Then he exerts gentle pressure, letting the antibiotic leak into the vein in a slow steady pace.  
It sets him as ease to know that antibiotic is in his bloodstream. By his calculations he knows that it is approximately six hours to noon. This is when the next dose will be due. He has only twenty or so of these tiny vials left. Enough maybe for a week.  


If he is not better by then he doubts the antibiotics will help him.  


He considers taking a shot of the morphine but decides to wait until noon and see if he still feels he needs it. The pain of moving his arm makes him regret that decision for a moment or two but he feels it’s worth it.  


If only simply to avoid the cliché of the morphine addicted poet. 

\--

_You will feel worse before you feel better_ , he tells himself as he sweats and staggers his way through the Greatwoods.  
He needs only to skirt the edge of the woods, knows he will have to spend more of his energy on climbing the foothills which he sees rising in the distance. When the sun is at its peak he stops, completing the ritual of his dosing with a second precious vial. Wincing at the poor practice he keeps the needle with him, wrapped in gauze, knowing he will run out of their valuable commodity if he simply casts them on the floor behind him.  
The woods are quiet and still. He is aware that the heat and the pain in his head is making it difficult to concentrate on anything other than putting one foot in front of the other.  
Somehow he manages. Taking a third dose as night falls.  
This time he uses an ampoule of the morphine and falls promptly asleep beneath the brambles. 

\--

He feels the touch on his head first. He startles, kicking out weakly, coughing as he tries to shout, but settles as he feels the weight of Fitchner’s gaze.  
‘You’re burning up.’ The Proctor frowns from his position crouched on the forest floor.  
Roque can only cough in reply, his broken ribs sending shards of pain through his chest with every movement.  
Fitchner lifts him into a sitting position, cradling him against his knee as he presses a flask to his lips.  


‘Little sips, just little sips.’ Fitchner’s voice is strangely tender.  


It’s water but filled with some sort of herb unfamiliar to Roque.  
‘The morphine’s good for the pain but it can’t settle a fever for love nor money.’ The Proctor explains.  
Roque coughs again, this time more weakly, pressing his hand to his throat as if trying to ease the irritation. He feels suddenly tired again.  
‘It’s not far from here, Kid.’ He points in the direction Roque has been heading. ‘Just over there, once you reach the top of that crest they’ll find you, you know what they’re like.’  
‘They’re safe?’ Roque manages. ‘Mars is safe…’  


Fitchner pauses before answering.  


‘There’s been some changes, boyo, but Mars still stands.’  
Roque frowns, suddenly worried, not quite sure what that means for him, for his friends.  
‘You’ll be welcomed home like a war hero, Roque.’ Fitchner replies gently. ‘They’ve been scouring these highlands for you for days…no one has a quarrel with you.’  
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’  
‘You don’t have to.’ There’s the slightest bite of impatience to the Proctor’s voice. ‘You just need to get over that hill.’  


Roque nods, it suddenly seems to make perfect sense to him. He just needs to sleep. Sleep. Excellent. He feels Fitchner lay him back down, smiles once, content in his purpose, and closes his eyes. 

\--

Somehow, despite the morphine and the unnamed anti pyrexic, he still wakes shaking. He can’t remember his dream, not completely, just eyes in the darkness and too many limbs and her screams.  


He remembers mostly her screams.  


Fitchner has tucked a piece of soft honey bread into the neck of his skinSuit. As he unpeels the waxed paper surrounding it he finds it’s still moist, gentle enough to stop him descending into wracking coughs.  
Another shot of the antibiotic, another early morning uncoiling aching limbs as the sun rises. His shins are covered in tender nodules and every time he breathes there is a sound like the release of steam.  


Another day.  


One more day, he tells himself, forcing his leaden limbs to move.  
The Greatwoods are dense; he’d never appreciated that before, but now, stumbling over roots and undergrowth he realizes just what a tactical horror it was to attack the House within the woods. How gorydamn lucky they were that Diana had fallen.  
He finds himself doubled over coughing every five minutes or so. Every movement seems to aggravate the ache in his chest.  
Once or twice he considers sitting and letting the medBots come for him.  


But he is not driven to live by positivity but by humans deep fear of failing to survive. 

\--

He hears the first howl as he exits the woods, stepping from the edges of the dense forest onto the tussocked foothills of the Highlands. Eyes scanning around him, he takes his second dose of antibiotic by the edge of a slow moving stream before beginning the torturous climb.  
His chest hurts; his ribs, his skin, his pleura and lungs, they all feel as if they are being bathed in acid, as if his body is dissolving away. Yet he climbs, one foot in front of the other, one slow step after the other.  


The second howl greets him as he pauses, chest heaving, hacking up lumps of deep green phlegm. A quick glance reveals a pack milling by the edge of the great woods, noses raised to the air, eyes fixed upon him.  


His chest tightens further with the panic until he feels he is being compressed from all sides, mangled down into parody of himself.  
He hauls himself up the hillside, using his good hand to speed to him. He knows he cannot look forward, cannot let himself become demoralized by the distance ahead. The howls are louder, closer and he knows he cannot run, he cannot do anything but simply continue.  


For the first time since he found himself washed up on the riverbank he is frightened.  


Yes, his dreams were filled with terrors, he had fought the fear of losing his mind with the grief and loneliness but this was something different. This was the very real possibility that he could be torn limb from limb within sight of House Mars. That he could fail even after the long fight.  


The howls only get closer, he knows they are taking the hillside at ease, that they can sense the blood, the weakness on him. That they do not even need to rush.  
He can see the light on the grass, how it shines, how it only gets brighter as he nears the top.  
A step, a step and he feels the earth begin to level out.  


He lets himself look up, out onto the wide expanse of the Highlands.  


An eagle circles high overhead, there is the howling of the wolves, the cry of the wind. In the distance is the high grey wall of Fort Mars, looking ever inch a Terran castle.  


Before he can even gather his breath he hears a snarl behind him. His knife is in his hand as the wolf leaps, slashing across its abdomen, warm blood spraying across his arm and chest. The wolf lands on him, knocking the wind from him as he struggles out from underneath, fighting his way to his feet.  
He hasn’t the strength to run and yet he is fleeing, the grass moving in blinding streaks through his vision. He feels the heat of his fever, it dries his throat, makes his eyes feel like they could simply close despite his panic.  


The clamor of the pack builds behind him, a wild animal sound.  


He is running, his chest searing with the pain in his ribs, tearing across the wide expanse of high grass. Ahead he can see the walls that mark the perimeter of Fort Mars.  
Wild euphoria fills him in a rush. So close, he imagines he can see shapes moving in the distance.  


Was that…was that the cry of a war horn?  


He allows himself a glance back, searching for the sound when he feels his foot catch, sinking into a hole up to the ankle. The rest of his body continues forward with a sickening crunch that makes him cry out in pain, plummeting to the grass, landing on his broken arm, his leg singing with pain.  
But that is the sound of war horns, growling cries against the howls of the wolves. He cannot tell what is closer but he lies there trying to make himself as small as possible, a non-entity in this conflict.  
There is a hiss of arrows flying overhead and yelps of pain.  
He feels the blood running down his arm from where he gutted the first wolf, knows that they will smell the kill on him, the murder of one of their own.  
But that is not the sounds of slavering jaws, that is the sound of horses. Hooves thundering on the tamped grass, circling him.  


‘State your name and purpose.’ A whip crack of an order but he is suddenly too tired to raise his head.  


‘Are you not listening?’ He recognizes the voice but only distantly.  


‘He’s bleeding.’ A woman’s voice, coloured with an edge of concern.  


He makes a small noise, tries to answer them but a cough racks through his body leaving him weak, his mouth filled with phlegm.  


‘Halt.’ This voice is familiar; he recognizes this voice even without using his eyes.  
The thump of boots as a man dismounts, crossing the creaking grass to kneel a healthy distance from him.  
But it takes only seconds before there is a dash of noise. The man has crossed the distance and is lifting him, rolling him across his knees with harried worried fingers.  


‘Roque!’ Cassius’s voice comes out somewhere between a sob and an exclamation.  


Roque peels his eyes open, looking up into a face that is worn and haggard. There is something in Cassius’ face that worries Roque. That _frightens_ him.  


‘Darrow?’ He manages, despite his breathlessness.  


There it is, that strange look that passes over his friend’s face. A look that even the Poet can’t put a name to.  


‘Roque, you need to rest, you need to…’ Cassius begins but he is stuttering, near falling over his words to try and keep Roque from speaking.  


‘Lea?’  


Roque knows the answer before he even asks the question but he can’t stop himself from asking, can’t stop himself from destroying his sea wall with one word.  


He fights up onto one arm, looking Cassius directly in the face.  
Cassius stares at him, golden eyes wide, seemingly unable to look away. Roque turns, appeals to the others with his gaze, watching Quinn’s eyes fill with tears, Tactus’s neck twitch in a reflex of discomfort. The other Golds avoid his gaze.  


‘Why can’t you say it?’ His voice comes out as a roar, surprising even him.  


Cassius flinches.  


‘Why can’t you say she’s dead?’ All the rage he’s kept barricaded floods from him.  


Cassius opens his mouth to speak but he’s too slow.  


‘Tell me she’s dead!’ Roque’s eyes are burning with tears. Why can’t they tell him? Why can’t they confirm what he already knows?  


‘She’s dead, brother.’ Cassius answers quietly, his hand rising to cradle the side of Roque’s face.  


They stare at each other for several long seconds. It is like the pause as a crack spreads through the foundations of a dam, widening, widening…  


…until it crumbles.  


Roque feels the pressure rise behind his face, tears building in his eyes, his throat catching, breaths gasping until he screams. Screams and screams as Cassius bundles him to his chest.  


His nails dig into Cassius’s back. His lungs feel as is they are simply ribboning away, his broken ribs sparking under the pressure.  
He can’t see for the tears but he can hear Cassius, hear his friend trying to comfort him. But it’s all for nothing, every word wasted. You couldn’t douse a fire with words, no more could you stop this pain, this awful terrible realization he has been holding in his heart for so long.  


He sees again the marks Antonia slashed in Lea’s chest, the strips of skin flayed from her abdomen and shoulders, the lips he’d kissed so tenderly torn and bloodied.  


He screams the screams he hears every single night. The screams that wake him. The screams he heard every step of his journey, like horrifying background white noise.  


Behind his eyes he’s staggering, fighting his body, fighting the drug to follow Antonia into the dark woods. But he’s always falling, always moving backwards as she disappears.  


He feels his body failing, feels the air whistle vainly into his lungs, hears himself fall silent as he teeters against Cassius’s shoulder.  


‘You’re safe.’ Cassius whispers and there are tears in his voice.  


_Safe?_ Roque questions. _Safe?_  


No, he will never be safe again.

**Author's Note:**

> I chose the name 'Here Andromeda Lies...' as a subversion of the myth binding Perseus and Andromeda. In the myth itself Andromeda is chained to a rock on the coastline by her father at the mercy of a sea serpent as an appeasement to the gods. In the myth Perseus returns from his killing of the Gorgon Medusa and frees Andromeda, saving her from death and marrying her. 
> 
> Roque does not manage to save his Andromeda. Where her body rests we do not know. He spends the rest of his days wondering whether he could have saved her.


End file.
